My name is John Chen and I am the vice-chair of the ASAE Trends Committee, subcommittee to the ASAE Communications Section Council. We have an exciting project we have been working on with ASAE regarding association communication trends and we want to hear from you.

If you or your association plan to, or are currently embracing one or more of these trends or if you have a strong opinion about the impact of these trends, we would love to hear from you for regarding an opportunity to be included in an upcoming Associations Now blog post.

1. Me Generation Membership With more Gen Xer’s in leadership positions, they desire completely customized membership experience. They seek a membership model that can be tailored to the exact taste of the individual; members are asserting their desire for uniqueness by demanding products that are malleable in form and customizable according to taste and lifestyle.

2. Big Brother Data Trend Traditionally, big data has been limited to companies like Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, and others. In an age where more and more things are connected, monitored, and logged, associations can now get in the game. Associations have massive amounts of information on their members from website activity, volunteer history, and event attendance tracking to name a new.

3. A Visual is Worth a Thousand Words Trend Visual-focused platforms like Instagram and Pinterest introduce the concept of photo communication. Faster and more instantly gratifying than words, photos are the next step in streamlining media.

4. Crowdsourcing 2.0 Trend In the past, associations have opened up some of their educational content for crowdsourcing. Now, a step above crowdsourcing, member-controlled innovations allow members to take part in the creation of actual products, meetings and changes to the association. This signifies a shift in the member-association dynamic, as it becomes clear the best way to ensure member satisfaction, is to give the member more control of the brand.

5. Testing Trend Most small associations have clued in to the value of quick testing years ago, with large associations lagging behind and aiming for perfection before execution. Recently, however, it seems larger associations are learning this valuable lesson the hard way, especially during the recession. With both large and small associations understanding the value of soft launches, a demand for devices, apps, or platforms that make testing easier can be observed.

Last August, at ASAE’s Annual Meeting I gave another Ignite Presentation (I know, you’re surprised). The title of my Ignite this year was, “Introvert Isn’t a Bad Word.” This was something that took me a long time to learn. Below is the Youtube video of my Ignite talk followed by a slightly modified blog post.

I was never been much of a hand raiser growing up. In fact, most of my life I avoided raising my hand. I remember my first day of 2nd grade. I was so scared and nervous that the second the door opened, I hid behind my parents. I sat quietly in the back and prayed my teacher didn’t call on me or make me talk.

The Dark Ages
Then there was the time in 7th grade when I had to deliver a presentation in front of my art class. I barely had time to prepare and felt like my presentation was mediocre at best. I lied to the teacher and said I wasn’t ready. I ended up taking an F on the project. This wasn’t the first or last time that I’d take an F on a project rather than face the debilitating fear of speaking in front of my class.

These two instances started a period of my life that I have come to call the “Dark Ages.” Also known as the “How horrible it must be for you to be an introvert” years. During this time, I would hear things like – “Well, it’s OK that you’re an introvert” as if to imply that being an introvert somehow made me a second class citizen.

Faking It Till You Make It
Growing up, we’re under constant pressure to join sports teams, extracurricular activities, and volunteer groups. But if you sit alone at lunch, then there’s definitely something wrong with you. So I played sports, I wrote for the school paper and yearbook, and I worked as an RA in the dorms…talk about an introvert’s nightmare.

I did all of these with a fake smile and a deep breath. I kept participating in activities geared towards extroverts in hopes that it would change who I was as a person. I remember constantly thinking that something wrong with me because I didn’t enjoy most of these activities. It took me a long time to learn that being an introvert has nothing to do with being shy, it doesn’t mean introverts are anti-social, and it surely doesn’t mean introverts can’t be leaders. These are just some of the many myths you hear about introverts.

Misconceptions About Introverts
The biggest misconception about introverts is that we’re shy. In reality, shyness is the fear of negative judgment from those around us. Being an introvert simply means we need alone time to recharge, where extroverts are typically recharge through big social settings.

The myth that introverts don’t like people is far from the truth. We’re intimately selective and prefer deep meaningful conversations. We tend to flounder during huge networking events with hundreds of people we don’t know. But invite us to dinner or a happy hour and we’ll be your best friend.

Learning by listening is a trait that many introverted leaders consistently demonstrate. Introverted leaders typically listen first, think second, and speak third. Our society has always equated leaders as these “larger than life” people. Think about how we treat athletes, political leaders, CEOs of great companies. Some of our most successful leaders were introverts. Would you believe me if I told you the likes of Warren Buffet, former Vice-President Al Gore, CEO of Google Larry Page, and President Obama are all introverts?

Succeeding as an Introvert
It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I realized being an introvert has its advantages. I’ve been fortunate to have a number of mentors, who, whether they realized it or not, have Ignited My Introvert. They taught me how to utilize my introvert strengths.

The opportunity for advanced preparation is key for an introvert. Environments like discussion panels, group meetings, and brainstorming sessions are less than ideal for introverts. If I am asked to participate in one of these, I know I need to prepare my thoughts well in advance.

While my counterparts may believe that I’m anti-social or shy, I know that my people skills are best used to develop strong one-on-one relationships like we come to expect from community managers, volunteer & board relations staff, and membership departments.

Following up after meetings, phone calls, or conferences are great ways for me to harness all my strengths as an introvert. Whether it’s a follow-up email after a meeting, or a hand-written note after a conference, following-up gives me time to collect and compose my thoughts.

My mentors made me realize that there’s nothing wrong with my set of skills. This newly found self-realization allows me to succeed as an introvert. A number of times throughout my journey, I’ve had to work to overcome being misunderstood because of my quiet temperament.

As an introvert, it’s not that I don’t like to talk. I know that sometimes my written words can better convey what I am thinking. Whether in casual conversation or a formal presentation, I carefully consider the situation and reflect before responding. I can communicate verbally, but only when I have something important to say. When introverts speak up, it’s usually worth listening.

Ignite Your Introvert
We all have the ability to do something amazing; some of us just do it a little more quietly than others. Chances are we all know an introvert. Maybe it’s a friend, a colleague, a fellow volunteer, or maybe it’s the introvert within you. Whoever it is, it’s time to Ignite Your Introvert.

So here is what I want you to do. After you’re done reading, go to this website I’ve setup, www.IgniteYourIntrovert.com and download the guide with ways that you can Ignite Your Introvert. Use this guide over the next 30 days to help the Introverts in your life shine. Give them opportunities to contribute using their strengths as introverts.

Once you’ve Ignited Your Introvert share the story of how you ignited your introvert. With your help, we can prove that Introvert isn’t a bad word.

ASAE’s Annual Meeting is always by far one of my most favorite professional developments. It’s the perfect combination of professional development, industry conversations, and personal connections. It’s the one place where I don’t have to explain my professional (it’s been five years and my mother still has no idea what I do, but as long as I’m fed she is happy).

I went to this year’s Annual Meeting with a very specific focus of obtaining some 200- and 300-level practical tips on how to do my job better, mostly in the area of marketing and communications. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get much here. It took a fair amount of “introverting” (Yes, Mark and Brandon, I’m going to make that a thing now) to really reflect on this experience. I learned that the power of this conference isn’t in learning how-tos, it’s finding larger concepts and ideas to bring back to your organization and using them to create new discussions at the table. Below are 10 themes that I took away from this year’s meeting:

Associations spend a lot of time and effort generating customers who purchase our products and members who pay us annual dues to be a part of the organization. These are transactional relationships that require constant development in hopes that they continue to spend money with our associations. Then on a yearly basis, we try convince them to continue their membership with our association. We are missing a great opportunity to turn members and customers into citizens of our community. Most associations already have some citizens, these are the volunteers, leaders, past-leaders, and veteran members who support the organization without a second thought; What about the members who aren’t there, or can’t get there because we have limited opportunities for this type of citizen. How can you create more opportunities to develop members and customers into citizens of your association?

Focusing Your Online Community

It’s without a doubt that social communities have taken the association world by storm. I saw more online community vendors in this year’s expo hall than I’ve ever seen. This is a great opportunity for associations to take the in-person experience and supplement it with an online experience that can last throughout the year. Too often I hear of associations who hope to “build it and they will come.” Having an online community doesn’t necessarily translate to all your members actively participating. I’ve presented a number of sessions with Ben Martin of Online Community Results on strategies and rules for online communities. Consider focusing the role and goal of your online community to a smaller segment of your membership, but more importantly ensure you have a solid and well thought-out strategy for your online community. For my association, our online community is a dedicated online infrastructure for all our volunteer efforts and professional interest section. What is the role of your online community? (If you say it’s a place where all members can come together to communicate and network, I suggest you re-think your purpose.) See what session attendees had to say during The 7 Sins of Community Management.

Discounting Membership and Products

When revenue numbers are down, our first reaction is to sell more to bring up the numbers. Then someone greats the great idea that if we lower the price for a short time we can sell more. While that sounds like a good idea, what message are you sending when you constantly lower the price of your membership and products? Are you saying that this is the “real” value that you associate with your product? For example, I love shopping at Banana Republic, but at $79 for a dress shirt, it’s a bit overpriced. If I just wait three days I know I’ll get another “special email offer” giving me a 30-40% discount code. Sure, this might convince me to buy the shirt now, but I’ll also never pay full price for one of their items if I know I can hold out and save 30%. What are you telling your customers and members when you constantly offer discounts on your membership, products, and services?

Repackaging Products and Services

Rather than discounting your membership, products, and services, consider re-packaging them to offer more value without cost to your organization. I sat in on Sheri Jacobs of Avenue M Group who presented The Art of Membership (view live twitter stream); in this session she talked about creating packages of products and services that provide more value for your members but with less cost to your organization. Forgive me, but I am going to butcher her example:

Best Practices of Bloggers [kindle edition]: $29

Best Practices of Bloggers [print edition]: $39

More people tend to pay $29 for the kindle edition because it’s cheaper and they figure they don’t need to spend the extra money for a print edition. Consider packaging the two for increased revenue:

Best Practices of Bloggers [Kindle + Print editions]: $39

While the price of the package is the same as the print edition, you can now provide easier justification for all those Kindle users to easily spend an extra $10 for the print edition. (Sheri, feel free to chime in with a comment below to better explain this.)

Personal Development

Every now and then you need to take a step back and take a look at where you are in life, both personally and professionally. Too often we get caught up in the mundane of our daily life tasks to reflect on ourselves. How effective can you be as an employee, coworker, family, friend, or person if you don’t truly understand yourself, your strengths, your areas for growth (I don’t like to call them weaknesses), and what you have to offer those in your life? One of the sessions I presented as an ignite called, Introvert Isn’t a Bad Word (future blog post to come), where I talked about recognizing my introvert strengths and harnessing those to do some good in my life.

Maximizing Your Staff Talent

Too often I hear supervisors don’t have the funds to support the professional development of their staff. I understand times are difficult and budgets are limited, but I also hear many of the supervisors wishing their staffs were more productive, or would come up with new ideas and solutions. If you aren’t exposing your staff to different ways of thinking, and other industry professionals, how can you expect them to come up with new ways to help your organization succeed?

Technology as a Solution

I was lucky enough to sit on a live stream panel with Renato Sogueco from the Society of American Florists and Rene Shonerd from PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) for Personify. At one point during the discussion Renato said that too many associations view technology as a cost-center rather than a solution center. How often do we hear “we can’t afford that technology” or “It’s too expensive to upgrade” without looking at the opportunity and cost-saving that the initial investment would save the organization or create additional opportunities for revenue generation?

Technology Isn’t Sexy

This section originally started from a conference tweet that said “Email Isn’t Sexy” to which I responded “But it can be.” I know there is a lot of focus on creating email that spam filters will let pass and is easily readable (translate: boring text-emails with your logo at the top). Sure, more people might be receiving our emails but what good does that do if the email is so unappealing that they have no interest in your call to action?

This made me realize that a lot of association technology isn’t sexy, but for some reason a lot of private industry technology is (though a lot of it still isn’t). What is it about technology that makes it so unappealing and difficult to use. I think part of the problem is the people talking about technology rather than the actual technology (and the people designing the interfaces). So how can we make technology sexy? Here are few ways to make technology sexy (FastCompany Article):

Define the technology as a solution to a need. Technology is meant to be a solution to our problems, not create more problems for its users

Make it simple to use but powerful enough to be complex and adaptable. Technology should do exactly what you want it to do for you. Some people want it to be powerful and some want just a few actions. Look at the iPhone and its ability to service millions of users by downloading apps they want and need.

Don’t forget emotion. Technology is more than mouse-clicks, zeros, and ones.

Connect. Not the actual users of the technology, but make all of your technology integrate and talk to each other. How many times do we make our members login to different parts of the website, or different websites all together, and then wonder why they are frustrated?

With everyone and their mother using the Internet on their phone and tablets, what does your website look like? Chances are your answer to this is a smaller version of your website. If you are making your website visitors pinch, zoom, pan, and school to use your website on their non-desktop computer than you’re doing it wrong. Why are you making it difficult for people to access your website? Now begins the reign of responsive design, it’s a buzzword you are going to start hearing more often.

Responsive design simply means your website and determines the size of the screen and adjusts the design to accommodate smaller or larger screen sizes. I don’t mean the website gets bigger or smaller, but fundamentally changes the design of your website. If you want to see this in action, check out one of the 50 websites here using responsive design (Hint: try viewing some of these sites on different devices). View the twitter live-stream that occured during the session Mobile Playground: Responsive Web Design.

Using More Data

Associations have the potential to capture a mountain load of data on their members and its activities. Most associations capture lots of data, but few use it to its maximum potential. My guess is that your organization does surveys after conferences and events, membership satisfaction reports, dashboards that are reported to the Board, and other similar types of activities, but what are you doing with your member data? How clean do you really think your membership database is? Where are other opportunities for you to capture and create data from? Allow your association’s data to tell you a story and then work together to connect the dots to tell you what the data means. We all think our data is clean, but how many times have you received duplicate magazines, brochures, postcards, or catalogs?

Most associations are good about capturing different data sets, few are able to put it together in one place for it to do any real good for the organization. Start using data to help you make informed decisions for the association. I encourage you to stop “going with your gut” or going off a few stories you hear from members, volunteers, or your board. Start making some decisions based on what your data is telling you. View the twitter live-stream that occurred during the session Flip That Association: Going from Data Zero to Data Hero.

Closing

Obviously you have to apply all of these themes to your organization in ways that will best serve your organization and it’s citizens. Are you having any of these conversations in your office? Thanks to this year’s Annual Meeting I have plenty of discussion topics that will keep me busy until Nashville. I’d love to hear your thoughts around these ideas. What themes did you pick up during this year’s Annual Meeting? Share your comments below!

It’s been a week since ASAE’s Annual Meeting ended and I’m not ready to close the book on this year’s meeting. If you attended the Annual Meeting in Dallas August 11-14 and saw the twitter feed – you know there was a lot of great information beind shared. There were so many great sessions that I wanted to attend but couldn’t. I couldn’t let all that amazing information dissapear into the twitter black hole of old tweets – so I spent a few days organizing, reformatting, and saving the tweets for future use.

Below you will find links to each day’s tweets (at least the ones I could recover) from the conference. I’m hoping we can continue to learn, grow, and move forward after what was another amazing Annual Meeting.

I attended ASAE’s Annual Meeting in Dallas from August 11 – 14, there were so many amazing tidbits and tweets shared that I couldn’t just let them disappear into a dark twitter hole. Here you will find all the tweets for Tuesday’s sessions. Hopefully, we can continue pull great info as we continue our great association work.

I attended ASAE’s Annual Meeting in Dallas from August 11 – 14, there were so many amazing tidbits and tweets shared that I couldn’t just let them disappear into a dark twitter hole. Here you will find all the tweets for Monday’s sessions. Hopefully, we can continue pull great info as we continue our great association work.

When Legal Isn’t Enough #ASAE12 LN1

I attended ASAE’s Annual Meeting in Dallas from August 11 – 14, there were so many amazing tidbits and tweets shared that I couldn’t just let them disappear into a dark twitter hole. Here you will find all the tweets for Sunday’s sessions. Hopefully, we can continue pull great info as we continue our great association work.

gregmcgreevey ‏@gregmcgreevey
Learn how Knowledge Vault can help you package and deliver on your “chapter in a box” initiative, booth 625. #asae12 LL2

ASAE Annual Meeting ‏@ASAEannual
For more on “Chapter in a Box” lab, see: A Case Study in Localizing Member Programs: http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/articledetailnew.cfm?ItemNumber=180294 #ASAE12 LL2

Update August 6, 4:16pm – I added a few other social events on Sunday and Monday I thought sounded interesting but will be unable to attend.

On-Site Tips for Attendees

Have a planKnow what you want to get out of the conference, what you’re going to do while you’re there – it’s much easier than constantly flipping through your program finding out where to be next.

Pick a few sessionsLine up a number of educational sessions for each time slot. You’ll see below I picked three for each time slow in case some of them are full.

Clear your calendarTry to be 100% unavailable for work so you can focus on the conference experience.

Spend some time in the expo hallIf you’re responsible for marketing your association’s conferences, talk to the CVBs in the cities you’ll be visiting.

Meet new peopleDon’t sit with friends you already know during sessions, lunches, and events. It feels safe but people are less likely to interrupt two comfortable friends and you’ll end up limiting yourself.

Phones to silentAs AMC Theatres always say, Silence is Golden, only when you’re in a session though. There’s always someone who forgets to do this.

Pace yourselfIf you try to be everywhere in the first day or two, you’ll crash well before the end of the conference.

Tweet
There’s something about live-tweeting and conversing with all the other association professionals on twitter that I love doing while I’m at the conference. If you’ll be tweeting at the conference, let me know if I need to add you to my ASAE Annual Conference Twitter list. Follow the list if you’re looking for people to follow during the conference.

Saturday

If you have the fortune of landing on Saturday, you’re in luck. It’s so much easier getting into conference mode if you arrive on Saturday. This year, my flight plans didn’t get me into Dallas early enough to do one of the Dallas Double Take Tours. I’ll land in Dallas around 1:15pm or so, this will give me plenty of time to get to my hotel and settle in.

2:00pm
I expect to arrive at the hotel around 2pm or so. If you have a little bit of time this afternoon, use it to get settled into your room. I always unpack my entire bag; everything either goes onto a hanger in the closet or into a drawer. Trust me; it’s much easier than trying to get ready each morning out of your suitcase.

Ironing Tip: Once I’ve unpacked everything, the first thing I usually do is take all my clothes and hang them in the bathroom – turn on the hot water and steam all the wrinkles out of my clothes. Some items may require ironing anyways but this usually gets me a solid start. Or you can skip this step and go straight into ironing all of your clothes. I usually find a few steam sessions does the trick for me.

7:30 – 10:30pm
Definitely make your way to the Opening Night Celebration at Cowboys Stadium. ASAE will be providing bus/shuttle service from all the hotels to the opening celebration, so don’t worry about taking a taxi to the party. Hopefully you packed your favorite football jersey – definitely sport that. I’ll be coming in bar shoes, jeans, and my Tom Brady Jersey (Go Pats!). Last year’s opening celebration did not disappoint and this year’s should be stellar as well. Make sure you visit the conference center to “register” and pick up your badge holder – badges will be required to get in.

Sunday

6:00 – 7:15am
Each year ASAE hosts a 5k Fun Run/Walk during annual. It’s something I’ve wanted to do but a 6am start time is a bit rough for me. This year, I’ll be skipping out on it in lieu for a few extra hours of sleep. Maybe next year

8:30 – 10:00am
The first session of the conference will be Opening Session with James Carville, Karl Rove and Michelle Bernard engaging in a spirited, insightful, and provocative discussion. I’m having some difficulty seeing the purpose of this session to association professionals but how often will I have the opportunity to hear these three speak in person?

10:00am – 1:30pm
More and more I’m starting to realize the Association Solutions Marketplace with Lunch is a missed opportunity for a lot of people. In the last few weeks I’ve noticed myself saying on a number of occasions “I’ll be at ASAE’s annual, I can — look for vendors, talk to our vendor, and meet with our future CVBs — while I’m there. There’s no other place where I’m going to have this kind of access to my current, future, and potential business partners that I’ll have during the Expo Hall. I highly recommending checking to see if any of your vendors will be there; this is a great opportunity to get some one-on-one time if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback about their products. Also, it’s an included lunch!

Visit the On-Site bookstore. This is a tough one for me…while I do love great association books I rarely want to carry them home. If I have space in my checked bag I’ll buy them but I usually don’t want to carry them on board with me. The conference discounts are nice though

1:30 – 2:45
This is the heart of the conference, the learning labs. The good sessions fill up quickly so make sure you pick a few sessions in each time slow you are interested in attending. I think it’s also important to use this opportunity to explore areas you don’t normally get exposed to. I make it a habit of picking three sessions in each time slot and rank them in order. More times than not my first, second, and even third choices have been packed forcing me to scramble to find a new session.

When I’m picking my sessions I’m usually all over the place. My primary focus is communications and marketing but I also try to attend sessions about meetings, governance, membership, and sessions for my own personal/professional development.

For this time slot I’ve selected:

Business of Meetings: The Strategic Impact of Digital Events on Meetings

Video as an Educational and Communication Tool

Conversations that Matters: How Online Community is Changing the Way We Work

Interesting Session: Story Slam/Coaching Jam

12:30pmTravel Alberta is hosting baseball game, Texas Rangers vs. Detroit Tigers, immediately following the ASAE tradeshow. Head to the Texas Rangers baseball game in an air conditioned bus to watch from a private suite.

3:15 – 4:30
For this time slot I’ve selected:

The Science Behind Member Loyalty

Grow Revenue through a Successful Partnership Program

The Future of Tradeshows

5:00 – 6:00pmCommunity Section Receptions are a great time for you to mingle with other association professionals in the same position as you. Take this opportunity to meet and mingle to develop your network of peers. These will be association peers you’ll be reaching out to when you come across an issue or problem that you need help with. Don’t feel like you have to stay in on reception either, especially if you’re a small staff professional who is responsible for multiple areas. Keep in mind, you don’t want to be one of those networkers who only spends 5 minutes in each place and denying yourself the opportunity to make some genuine connections.

6:00pm
The rest of the evening is open for the conference. This is when most vendors will schedule their social events for clients and/or new prospects. Basically, this is a big “social” night for all attendees. You will find some attendees planning dinners or happy hour with friends, other attendees going to vendor parties, some hanging out at the local pub. Whatever you do, don’t spend the rest of your night in your room. Below are some of the events I’ll be attending:

6:00-9:00pm
This is an event I won’t be attending but looked amazing. Fort Worth CVB is hosting a Best of Fort Worth on the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. If you’re interested in attending RSVP to Linda Jingles at lindajingles@fortworth.com or call 817.698.7833 no later than August 8.

6:30 – 9:30pm
I’ll be starting my night off with Higher Logic’s, Fiesta Fabulosa at the Iron Cactus. Their party will feature a Mariachi Band and true Texas food and drink; I’m looking forward to this. For registration information, contact Lauren Wolfe, RSVPs are required.

6:30pm
I won’t be attending this but I thought it was interesting, a CVB Coalition event, Welcome to Our Home Away From Home by Visit Pittsburg, Visit Milwaukee, and Travel Portland at the Belo Mansion.

8:30pm – 2am
Multview’s Party Your Assn Off is definitely on the top of my DO NOT MISS events. Last year’s party was an amazing event and this year is looking to be amazing as well. This event is open to all registered attendees so make sure you sign up for this!

10:00am – 1:30pm
If you’ve never been to ASAE’s annual conference, the Association Solutions Marketplace with Lunch floor is HUGE. I’ll definitely be using this second day to meet with CVBs of our future location meetings and vendors with specific products. Even if you aren’t looking for a vendor now, chances are you will be at some point – take some time to walk up and down the aisles.

4:30 – 5:30pm
For all of you association publishing professionals, join Association Media and Publishing for their Networking Get-Together at Bob’s Steak & Chop House in the Omni Downtown Dallas. If you haven’t registered yet, sign up through their website, you’ll need an AM&P account.

5:30 – 8:30pm
This is the first time I’ll be attending ASAE’s Foundation’s – The Classic VIP Reception at the Meyerson Symphony Center – home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I’m looking forward to food from Dallas’ top chefs and restaurants and their local celebrity chefs.

7:00 – 10:00pm
Following the VIP Reception will be ASAE’s Foundation’s – The Classic at the Winspear Opera House to indulge in the ‘new’ Dallas with catering by Wolfgang Puck (this guy seems to be everywhere these days).

9:00pm – 1:00am
The YAPstar network-FEST is always another great social gathering during ASAE’s annual. This year’s event will be hosted at the Hard Rock Dallas. The first 125 guests will receive two free drink tickets thanks to Association Mavens and Aggregage – thanks to both of them for their support this year and of course Hard Rock for the venue!

Tuesday

9:00 – 10:15am
For this time slot I’ve selected:

Can You Hear Me Now? Communicating With Members on Multiple Platforms

How Relevance is Transforming the Direct Marketing Strategy of Associations

12:15 – 2:00pm
I’m really looking forward to the Closing General Session with Daniel Pink, The Moving Business: The Tender Art and Surprising Science of Convincing, Compelling and Cajoling Others where Daniel will offer a fresh look at the art and science of selling (something we can all try to do better as association professionals).

2:00pm – 7:00pm
If you’re looking for something to do before the Closing Night party and not taking one of the Double Take Tours (I’m sad I missed out on this opportunity), check out the New York Times’ Travel Page, 36 Hours in Dallas. Obviously you won’t have time to do everything on here, but you may find a few interesting things to pass the time Tuesday Afternoon. Of course you’ll want to do some of these activities with your newly found association friends!

7:00 – 10:00pm
On the final night of the conference, celebrate with your fellow attendees at the Closing Night Celebration at Fair Park, the nation’s largest and recently named a “Top 10 Classic American Experience” by CNN.

Have I missed anything for this year’s conference? What are you looking forward to in Dallas?

After my previous post, Five Tips for an ASAE Annual Conference First-Timer, I decided a more in-depth guide might be helpful. So I bring to you, A Walk-Through Guide to ASAE’s Annual Conference. This will be a three-part series focusing on what to do before, during, and after this year’s ASAE Annual Conference. This first post will focus on what you need to do before you arrive in Dallas to make the most out of your time while you are there.

Download the Conference App

ASAE continues to provide an app for their conferences; you can download an iPad version from the iTunes Store by searching for ASAE12. I’ve heard that there will be an iPhone app but as of this posting I have yet to find it through the App Store. If you are on a non-apple smartphone check out your app store. The app is helpful in keeping track of the sessions you’ve selected for the conference and for the finding information about the exhibitor hall. However, it doesn’t replace all the information in the conference program.

This year they’ve added integration into Collaborate, ASAE’s social community for its members. There’s also twitter integration for the conference hashtag, #ASAE12, the ability to tweet from within the app, exhibitor information, and a floor plan for the expo hall only. It’s worth the download — even if it’s just to have quick access to a schedule at a glance. You won’t be able to enter any events not found in the app though — so all those meetings you schedule and social events will have to go somewhere else.

Review the Conference Sessions

This year’s annual conference hosts more than 130 sessions, 137 to be exact (as of the preliminary brochure). That’s a lot of choices for even the most veteran conference attendee – and you only get to pick seven of these learning labs. You will have some tough choices to make, to ensure you make some good ones take some time going through the preliminary brochure you were sent, or review session descriptions online.

Typically I go through each Learning Lab time slot and pick three or four sessions that I’m interested in attending. I try not to pick sessions solely in my responsibility area, I encourage you to pick some sessions that seem interesting even if it’s out of your practice area. You’ll be amazed at the ideas you can pull in from other topic areas. In my next post I’ll share with you the sessions I’ve selected for each time slot.

Also, if you end up in a session that isn’t interesting you; don’t feel like you have to stay through it. I know everyone gets nervous about leaving during the middle of the session. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, and I think it depends on the person. It’s possible the session description didn’t match what they are talking about or you thought it would be something completely different. While I’m all for being polite, I also realize I only have 7 sessions to pick from and I can’t afford to “waste” a session just to be polite.

Download Session Handouts

ASAE’s conferences have been paper-free/green friendly for a while now so all of the provided handouts are available online. It’s a shame they don’t make the handouts available through the iPad app. You may want to consider pre-printing handouts for sessions you want to attend. ASAE will also have printer stations located throughout the conference floor with access to the handouts that you can print onsite. I would rather spend time in-between sessions meeting new people than running off to print handouts. You can always access these handouts online after the conference.

Line Up Your Social Events

Attend social events! Association professionals definitely know how to let their hair down, and you never know when you’ll make an amazing connection. As I’m writing this I’m talking to friend I met at last year’s annual conference – in fact, we probably talk multiple times a week (on g-chat of course).

You can meet quite a few people at social events, such as the Opening Night Celebration at Cowboys Stadium on Saturday Night, Section Receptions on Sunday evening, Awards & Recognition Breakfast, ASAE Foundation’s Classic VIP Reception and Classic, or the Closing Night Celebration at the Fair Park on Tuesday night, just to name a few. Of course there are always vendor parties to attend on Sunday and Monday evening. I’ll let you know which social events I’m attending in my next post.

Research Dallas: I’m sure most of us have never been to Dallas anymore. Find a few items you might be interested in checking out while you’re there. I’m a big fan of the New York Times, 36 Hours in <city name> series, see their page for Dallas.

In my next post, I’ll provide a detailed walk-through guide for Saturday through Tuesday evening, including top three sessions I’ve picked for each time slot and what evening events I know about.

What pre-conference tips do you have to share with your fellow attendees?